Nigeria: 30 Percent FHA Low Cost Houses for Low Income Earners

Thirty percent of housing units in new Federal Housing Authority housing estates are now to be reserved for low income earners, Managing Director of the authority, Arc Terver Gemade, said in Abuja.

Speaking to reporters, Gemade said 50 percent of housing units in such estates would also be set aside for allocation to medium income earners.

He said the authority took the step as a way of offering succour to such category of Nigerians who would otherwise not be able to buy houses at the prevailing market rates.

Gemade said the FHA was not able to do more for now because of its own financial constraints having been taken off government budgetary allocation for over 10 years.

He said the authority would be in a better position to serve the underprivileged when the social housing policy being pursued by the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development comes into effect.

Gemade also announced that housing units built by the Federal Housing Authority have been completed in six states and were ready for allocation to prospective buyers.

He said the new housing estates were in Osogbo, Osun State; Odukpani, Cross River State; Gombe, Gombe State; Goningora, Kaduna State; Abesan, Lagos State and Makurdi, Benue State.

Explaining that the completed housing units were in the first phase of the various estates, he added that work had commenced on the second phase under a public private partnership arrangement.

According to him, Osogbo has 100 units of three bedroom and semi-detached two bedroom bungalows while the estate at Abesan, Lagos, consists of 78 luxury flats in a block of six flats each in the first phase.

Gemade said work had also reached advanced stage on the partnership estates in Makurdi (Benue State), Yenagoa (Bayelsa State) and Awka (Anambra State).

He said each of the estates was supported by world class infrastructure such as roads, electricity, independent water supply, street lights and drainages.

He expressed satisfaction with the pace of work on the estates being developed under the 27 new partnership agreements signed by the authority last year.

Apart from Abuja where the authority had secured about 1,000 hectares of land for a new town development, Gemade said the authority would in the next few months move to new locations across the country's six geo-political zones with a view to taking housing to Nigerians wherever they lived.

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